Cuckoo Summer

Product Information

They hide him, from the Home Guard, the leader of whom is a man who fought in WW1, and has become bitter and twisted. I’m pretty sure that this is the only children’s novel that mentions the hidden treasure of betony, lady’s bedstraw and hare’s-foot clover. Bronnie is so lovely with the boys and we also felt that having a man enthusing about the books set a great example. The story centres on two children, one resident farmer, being brought up by three aunts while the men are away fighting, and one evacuee, who turns out to be a runaway. Author of eight novels, including The Season Ticket, Give Us This Day and Mr McCool, Jonathan's work has been filmed, staged and Radio 4 serialised.

Bookwagon loves this splendid novel, set in the spellbinding Cumbrian countryside over a Cuckoo Summer of 1940. As the story develops, the stakes grow ever higher for Sally and Tommy and this will keep readers gripped as Cuckoo Summer moves towards its conclusion, when secrets are revealed and a way forward is found.The chapters are short, keep you interested and the only thing missing for me was a little bit of heart to make you fall in love with Sally and Tommy.

Descriptions of country life and of the Fells demonstrate tenderness, and the Cumbrian countryside is almost another secondary character, but these descriptions aren’t laboured. Andersen Press) Although Tommy’s holding in his worries about his missing father, his aunts are aware of his feelings. The unfolding of Sally’s story and the close friendship between these children, and the silent Simon is a pleasure.At one point, the children’s unkind teacher, Miss Gently rattles through the timetables, beating her long ruler like ‘an auctioneer watching farmers at a cattle sale. Tommy’s learned some of her Geordie speech patterns, enough to know that the German gadgie she’s discovered in the woods is the airman who’s parachuted out of the plane crashed in Woundale woods.

Yesterday a parent came over to tell me how impressed she was by the book fair and that you did a fabulous job of selling the books to the children first. There is a neatness to the ending, but I think it can be forgiven – this is a children’s novel after all. When the two friends find an injured German airman in the woods, they face a dilemma about what to do next. It’s why Aunt Annie takes little notice of Mr Scarcross’s harsh words about his evacuee friend, Sally Smith.The crux of the story turns on their discovery of a wounded German airman who has parachuted from his plane and landed in their fields. Initially, the plot appears straightforward, but it is the relationship between Tommy and Sally which holds the magic to this story. Meanwhile, Tommy’s having doubts, not only about the size of this secret, or Sally’s circumstances with the hateful Mr Scarcross, but about his father.